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4 Tips to Keep Students Learning This Summer with Exact Path

4 Tips to Keep Students Learning This Summer with Exact Path

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

The summer slide is definitely something to be feared. The statistics around learning loss during the summer months are nothing short of staggering, but your students don’t have to be another statistic! Instead, ditch all those trips to the copy machine making those summer learning packets (that often just end up in the trash), and instead, with a little forethought and planning, leverage the technology you already have in your classroom during the summer months!

With Edmentum Exact Path, you can turn to an online summer learning program that’s much more meaningful for your students and beneficial for their varying learning abilities. Discover four tips to keep the learning going using Exact Path, even when students aren’t in the classroom.

Think It Through: To Assess or Not to Assess

One key to a successful Exact Path implementation over the summer months is making sure that your students have individualized learning paths that are up to date. If it has been a little while since students have spent time in the program or if their last assessment was several months back, you might consider giving students one final assessment before they break for summer vacation. Remember, each fresh assessment administration means that students receive an updated learning path, ensuring that the curriculum they’re set to work on is at just the right level for their unique learning needs.

Set Up Summer Challenges

One way that you can keep things interesting over the summer months is to set up Challenges for your students in Exact Path. If you’re not familiar with this feature, Challenges allow teachers to define and set customized goals for specific learners or classes. These goals can be based on time-on-task or skill mastery to encourage engagement in multiple ways. Students can monitor what Challenges they have to work on and watch their Challenge Badges grow as they meet their learning goals.

You might consider setting up weekly Challenges so that students keep on learning all summer long. Another option here is incentivization—consider noting prizes tied to earning Challenge Badges or work with teachers in the next grade level to ensure that there are incentives in place when students return in the fall. This flexible tool allows you to decide what level of encouragement your students might need.

Build Custom Assignments

Your students will automatically have just-right content to work on in their learning paths, but by also adding in assignments, you gain the ability to ensure that your learners focus on specific topics and skills that you think are important during the summer months. Use assignments to ensure that students can preview curriculum for the next grade level, or conversely, use them as a review of this the current school year’s content. Either path you choose, the assignments feature allows you to search for lessons, activities, videos, and quizzes by skill or standard—and it even gives you access to content that students won’t experience in their learning paths.

Get Parents on Board

So, how do you make sure that your grand plans for summer learning aren’t all for naught? Gain buy-in from parents, of course! Once you’ve outlined your expectations or recommendations for students over the summer, communicate them to your students’ families. Chances are that they’re also scratching their heads for genius ideas and activities to keep their children from uttering those two painful words: “I’m bored.” Try sending home our summer learning parent letter! You can even customize it to add in your own suggested summer plan or incentives for staying on track.